Alarm systems are commonly employed to provide an alarm indication in the event of an undesired intrusion or condition in a selected location. Such systems are finding increasing acceptance in military, commercial and residential applications in view of the pervasive concerns in the public and private sector relating to security and safety.
Alarm systems include event detection sensors which may be configured as stand alone units or alternatively may be clustered. Clustered systems permit monitoring of alarm data at a central station collected from numerous sensors disposed at remote locations. The occurrence of false alarms in systems including multiple sensors is at least bothersome and can even result in a breach of security or lead to life threatening situations. It is therefore advantageous to be able to ascertain proactively whether a particular sensor is fully operational and properly adjusted without extensive and time consuming evaluation. Typically, the evaluation of sensor operational characteristics requires the use of complex test equipment by technically trained personnel and is a time consuming and costly task, particularly when numerous sensors are involved. None of the security systems known in the art incorporate means for providing historical sensor operational data or means for readily displaying in a user friendly manner data representative of key sensor parameters to assure continued functional integrity of an alarm system.